Thorium-MOX

-Mixed oxide (MOX) fuel provides about 2% of the new nuclear fuel used today.
-MOX fuel is manufactured from plutonium recovered from used reactor fuel.
-MOX fuel also provides a means of burning weapons-grade plutonium (from military sources) to produce electricity…Learn more>>

MOX use-MOX fuel was first used in a thermal reactor in 1963, but did not come into commercial use until the 1980s. So far about 2000 tonnes of MOX fuel has been fabricated and loaded into power reactors. In 2006 about 180 tonnes of MOX fuel was loaded into over 30 reactors (mostly PWR) in Europe.

Today MOX is widely used in Europe and in Japan. Currently about 40,…Read more>>

Recycling Normal Used Fuel-If used fuel is to be recycled, the first step is separating the plutonium and the remaining uranium (about 96% of the spent fuel) from the fission products with other wastes (together about 3%). The plutonium then needs to be separated from most or all of the uranium. All this is undertaken at a,…Read more>>

MOX Reprocessing and Further Use-Used MOX fuel reprocessing has been demonstrated since 1992 in France, at the La Hague plant. In 2004 the first reprocessing of used MOX fuel was undertaken on a larger scale with continuous process. Ten tonnes of MOX irradiated to about 35,000 MWd/t and with Pu content of about 4% was involved. The main problem,…Learn more>>

Plutonium-Thorium Fuel-Since the early 1990s Russia has had a programme to develop a thorium-uranium fuel, which more recently has moved to have a particular emphasis on utilisation of weapons-grade plutonium in a thorium-plutonium fuel. The programme is described in the information page on Thorium. With an estimated 150 tonnes of surplus weapons plutonium in Russia, the thorium-plutonium project would not necessarily cut across existing plans to make MOX fuel…Learn more>>world-nuclear.org